JAPAN TODAY NEWS WEBSITE COLUMNS 4-6
By Arudou Debito/Dave Aldwinckle
Published Feb-Mar 2001
OTARU'S BATHHOUSE BLUES PART ONE
BACKGROUND: JAPAN AND RUSSIA IN HOT WATER
By Arudou Debito
Column Four for Japan Today
Imagine if you will a community, a seaport town, with thousands of sailors bringing
in millions of US dollars of goods.
Imagine the win-win situation for the townies: cheap coldwater catch for an insatiable
seafood market, and pocket money from selling used household goods and cars from
Japan's gomi desert.
Imagine that some of these sailors, after spending a month or so out at sea in a
rusting hulk, unable to take a hot bath or have a drink as a landlubber for the duration,
cut loose in the community.
Imagine this happening in a place where cultural sensitivities are particularly acute.
Imagine this happening between two countries already in conflict: Russia and Japan
(who, having never signed a peace treaty after WWII, are still technically at war).
Then imagine this Molotov Cocktail being mixed in a Hokkaido city named Otaru.
Otaru is a special place. Not only is it a charming port town with glorified canals,
it also has an ironic personality: a "we are a pioneer Hokkaido community"
insularity coupled with the progressive exigencies of tourism.
Otaru claims to like outsiders. As long as those outsiders are not Russian.
Many Hokkaido elders have a grudge against Russia. As settlers in lands gained from
war spoils, some Dosanko remember losing their shirt in Karafuto (Sakhalin) and the
Northern Territories in 1945, then sharing houses with Russian families under Stalinist
resettlement policies, or even spending years in Russian concentration camps.
By postwar agreements, these people were eventually expelled from the USSR. Many
expellees settled in Otaru because it had been the major seaport link to Karafuto.
Then came the Cold War. Even though Hokkaido is mere kilometers from Russia, for
twoscore plus years there was scant contact across the straits, save shots fired
at Japanese fishing boats.
But that was then. With the fall of the USSR impoverishing the Russian Far East,
the tide has turned. More Russians are coming to Hokkaido seaports than ever before.
The trade is lively. On average about ten Russian ships dock a day at Wakkanai, Japan's
northermost city. Road signs up there are in Cyrillic.
Otaru, however, gets only three ships a day, but this still means around 30,000 Russian
visitors a year.
So, since former foes with an unsettled past are meeting in a seaport (which historically
all over the world have been hotbaths, er, hotbeds for intercultural envelope-pushing),
there always was potential for a flashpoint.
Cue the onsen bathhouses--where two very important Japanese values, hygiene and due
relaxation, intersect.
According to reports that I have personally confirmed, some Russian sailors have
been highly offensive.
Some have come in drunk, or vodka-ed up in the tub, then roared about disturbing
the peace that generally reigns on the men's side of the bath (trust me). Some ignored
requests to gain their quietus, putting managers in a difficult position of enforcement.
Some have gotten into the bath without washing their soap off, or while still wearing
their underpants. Others persisted in jumping or swimming in the tub.
Some have apparently borne lice and fleas, and left smelly clothes in the locker
room.
And some, being in the most transient of trades, have scared off other customers
with their rough-and-ready demeanors.
Business suffered. I know of one Otaru sauna whose open-door policy watered the customer
base down from regulars to Russians, ultimately leading to bankruptcy and flinty-eyed
managers.
Around three years ago, those managers reopened a new family-oriented bathhouse named
"Yunohana". From opening day it enforced a more discriminating policy towards
its clientele.
I mean this literally. Once scalded, Yunohana decided to exclude all Russians from
entry.
This decision holds water to some degree . However (and this is where we justify
the Twilight-Zone theme), here we lurch into the bizarre.
Yunohana didn't just refuse Russians. "That would have been blatant discrimination"
(rokotsu na sabetsu), their manager told me. "We can't tell the difference between
Russians and other foreigners anyway."
So they decided to exclude all foreigners.
"JAPANESE ONLY" proclaimed their sign outside, in English, Russian and
Japanese.
This means all non-Japanese, regardless of tenure of Japan residency, acculturation,
language ability, and knowledge of Japanese bathing customs, are refused at the door.
But Yunohana was not the first. Eight years ago, another bathhouse, "Osupa",
did the same. So did another place intermittently at Otaru's ferry terminal.
Emboldened, other industries adopted this policy. Otaru taxi drivers often do not
stop for white people unless hailed from a train station. Some restaurants have reputedly
put up Russian signs saying "Staff Only" at the doorway, seating foreigners
at tables outside.
Then it spread to other cities. In Wakkanai, confirmed excluders included a sports
shop and a barber. An officially-sanctioned public bath, "Yuransen", has
a separate "gaijin buro" for foreigners only with its entrance around the
corner (fine print: it's smaller and charges foreigners over six times more than
the Japanese side).
In Monbetsu City, the Hamanasu bar district's local restaurateur association manufactured
"JAPANESE-ONLY STORE" signs in Russian only. About half of its 200 members
put them up, then refused service to even Cyrillic-illiterate Westerners.
And in Nemuro, Rumoi, and Ohtaki-Mura (a resort village so far up in the mountains
it cannot claim Russian patronage), reports of foreign exclusions proliferated over
the internet.
This is where we came in. In July 1999, some friends and I read that a Brazilian
wife of a Japanese family went to Yunohana. Only she was excluded.
We realized this would not do. A mother not being able to bathe with her children?
And what would happen to our international children when they grew up?
We saw the twilight of discrimatory zones a la the US South and South Africa.
Not in our Great White North. On September 19, 1999, we decided to do something about
it.
More about that in my next column.
Arudou Debito/Dave Aldwinckle
Sapporo, Japan
January 19, 2001
COLUMN FOUR ENDS
OTARU'S BATHHOUSE BLUES PART TWO:
BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS
By Arudou Debito
Column Five for Japan Today
"Sorry, but our policy is to refuse entry to foreigners." Thus spake Yunohana
Onsen, a large family bathhouse in Otaru, Hokkaido.
Date: September 19, 1999. Four international families with Japanese children and
friends, total seventeen people, had entered the premises to witness this managerial
pronouncement.
"Why?", asked my friend Olaf, noting it was only us white people, not our
Asian-looking families, who were stopped at the door.
The manager reiterated the reasons I told you in my last JT column: Russian sailors
coming in, wreaking havoc, driving away the native Japanese customers and causing
financial ruin. "But we can't tell you apart from Russians, so we have to refuse
all foreigners."
"But you didn't refuse all foreigners." We pointed out a member of our
group amongst our wives inside. "She's a Chinese, with her two Japanese children."
"Oh, sorry. Mrs Chinese, you'll have to leave." Having come without her
husband, she took her toddlers back to the counter for a refund.
Said our party: "We understand you have a problem. But excluding innocents is
not the solution. It is untenable. Today you clearly wound up excluding by race,
not nationality."
"We apologize for the oversight."
"And what about our children?", asked my wife, pointing out our daughters--one
looking very Asian, the other very Western. "They are both Japanese. What happens
when they get older?"
Manager: "We will have no choice but to exclude the foreign-looking one."
With this, we understood the depth of the problem, left a message for the head manager
to reconsider this policy, and quietly exited.
Thus began over a year of negotiations, both with a number of human rights groups
and as individuals, lobbying various authorities and summoning community support.
First, we talked to the Otaru city and Hokkaido government assemblies, corresponded
with the Otaru Mayor and Hokkaido Governor, consulted with the Ministry of Justice's
Human Rights Division and members of the Japanese Parliament, and notified local
consulates and sister cities.
We received predictable responses: Politicians: "This is a complicated issue."
Diplomats: "We will keep an eye on this." Bureaucrats: "Japan has
no law against racial discrimination, so we cannot stop a private-sector business
doing this."
So we asked for a law, lobbying PMs to draft a white paper, and surveying each political
party in last May's general election. Result: all parties surveyed agreed this exclusion
was discrimination, but nobody would legislate it away.
So we tried to legislate at the local level, filing petitions in several cities both
inside and outside Hokkaido for an anti-racial discrimination ordinance (jourei).
Result: rejection or committee limbo, citing a lack of local support.
So we appealed locally. Appearing at university-sponsored fora and newspaper-sponsored
debates, all sides--the city administrators, the non-Japanese, the onsens, and the
consumers--made their cases. Although enlightening in their degrees of disagreement,
the most conspicuous thing about the roundtables was onsen Yunohana's continuous
refusal to participate.
There was some progress. One of the excluders, Onsen Panorama, opened its doors to
all-comers in November 1999. Another, Osupa, instituted a members-only system for
foreigners only from March 2000--an imperfect solution, to be sure, but a demonstration
of a willingness to compromise.
Yunohana, however, rebuffed all attempts at negotiation--even turning down access
to a city-sponsored "hotline" in case of customer problems. Yunohana took
another ironic approach to communication: Instead of putting up city-provided signs
in three languages explaining bathing rules, it hired interpreters to refuse foreigners
in their own language.
Then came Oct 10, 2000. I received my Japanese citizenship (for reasons unrelated
to this issue--see my first three JT columns). I went down to Yunohana with two other
Otaru Japanese friends for a celebratory soak on Halloween night.
Guess what happened.
"Hey, take off your mask."
Okay, I guess this isn't the time for jokes. What really happened:
"Sorry, but our policy is to refuse entry to foreigners."
I showed my driver licence (which, in lieu of a Gaijin Card, now shows my honseki
and proves my citizenship) and received acknowledgment from the manager that I am
no longer a foreigner. However, he continued (in paraphrase):
"You still look like a foreigner. Letting you in might make our other customers,
who dislike foreigners, stay away." (full audiotape transcript and recording
of this discussion at http://www.debito.org/yunohanatranscript103100.html)
It was no longer a matter of nationality after all. It was clearly a matter of appearance,
therefore, in my case, race.
Enough was enough. We had tried all other avenues--administrative, legislative, and
popular appeal. Now it was time for judicial. As you might have seen in recent media,
on February 1, 2001, Olaf, another friend and I filed a civil suit against not only
Yunohana, for racial discrimination, but also the City of Otaru, for negligence under
the UN Convention Against Racial Discrimination.
Why the City? More on that in my next column.
Arudou Debito, Plaintiff
Sapporo
February 5, 2001
ENDS
SUITS AND THE CITY
By Arudou Debito
Column Six for Japan Today
As I wrote in my previous column, two other plaintiffs and I are suing Otaru's Yunohana
Onsen for racial discrimination. They kick out innocent foreigners and Japanese citizens
in violation of Article 14 of our Constitution, they'll hear about it in court.
However, we are also suing the City of Otaru for, among other things, negligence
under the the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Only
the second case (the first due to discrimination at the Prefectural University of
Kumamoto [LINK: http://www.kumagaku.ac.jp/teacher/~masden/mamorukai/english/Ehome.htm
] ) of the government being sued for this, this grabbed headlines.
Now, are we out of our heads? You can't fight City Hall, right? Especially in Japan,
where our research [LINK: http://www.debito.org/PALEJournals.html
] indicates that the courts see themselves as defenders of the State. What kind of
a case do we have?
Well, full details are up in English and Japanese here [LINK: http://www.debito.org/otarulawsuit.html
], but I will condense. Brace yourself for some legal arguments:
As I said last time, sixteen months of negotiating with the City was perpetually
stymied by bureaucrats and politicians: "It's too early, too hasty, or just
plain inappropriate to legislate this problem away," or "this requires
a national law, not a local ordinance" when refusing to draft any protections.
In hindsight, this was fortunate. Instead of passing a toothless resolution (like
Japan's Equal Employment Opportunities Law) with no punishments for offenders, having
no domestic law against racial discrimination means international law applies, according
to the 1999 Bortz Case [LINK: http://www.issho.org/BENCI/#anabortz
]. And the CERD [LINK: http://www.debito.org/intlconvention.html
] is a doozy.
Effected in Japan on January 14, 1996, the CERD defines its terms, outlines situations
when discrimination might occur, and specifies what measures are to be taken in startlingly
clear language. One of my favorite bits (you might think treaties are boring parchments,
but the CERD is beautifully written) is within Article Two, which reads (my emphases):
"States Parties.. undertake to pursue by all appropriate
means and WITHOUT DELAY a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all
its forms."
Ahem. Otaru has had "Japanese Only" signboarded onsens since 1994, and
even when notified of the problem, the City took little action until the press coverage
from September 1999. Delay is damning.
More treaty: "Each State Party undertakes ...to ensure
that all public authorities and public institutions, NATIONAL AND LOCAL, shall
act in conformity..."
This includes a city government.
"Each State Party shall prohibit and bring to an end,
BY ALL APPROPRIATE MEANS, INCLUDING LEGISLATION AS REQUIRED BY CIRCUMSTANCES,
racial discrimination by any persons, group or organization."
This is our case. When Otaru finally took action it was ineffectual, haphazard, and
even as discriminatory as the onsens.
First, ineffectuality. The City established with great fanfare a "24 hotline"
in case of problems. However, it was made available only to two onsens with a history
of discrimination--not to the general public or other businesses where communication
breakdowns might equally occur. Why? City reps told me, "We can't handle too
many calls." Hence the anticipation of its own ineffectuality made for a Potemkin
system.
Second, haphazardness. Otaru made up multilingual bathing rules--which the onsens
simply refused to display. The City's response? "Oh well." The City then
distributed pamphlets on bathing rules to portside sailors. One time, that is, in
December 1999, and never again after that. And, according to Hokkaido Shinbun, they
only printed up 4000 copies, far short of Otaru's 30,000 annual Russian visitors.
Third, discrimination. In two policy meetings with international groups that Otaru
held in Autumn 1999, not a single foreigner was present--because they were refused
entry, by City bureaucrats. A proposed third meeting including foreigners was cancelled.
It is a mystery how an effective anti-discrimination policy can be created without
consulting those discriminated against.
But the lack of "appropriate means" is makes clear that neither treaty
nor entreaty worked. Aside from Otaru's unwillingness to establish legal measures,
once press coverage died down in the summer of 2000, so did Otaru's efforts. The
City had always refused to sponsor or hold any public fora on the issue, but a July
2000 proposal for a regular public roundtable on human rights was dead by August.
Even after October, when a naturalized Caucasian Japanese citizen (guess who) was
refused entry, there was no visible action taken.
All that the Otaru City government did, in the many correspondences I have seen and
had with them, was cite the problem with the Russian sailors and claim the City is
powerless to stop discrimination in private-sector businesses.
They are wrong. Again, under the CERD: "Article Six. ...States Parties undertake...
to guarantee the right of everyone... [t]he right of access to any place or service
intended for use by the general public, such as transport, hotels, restaurants, cafes,
theatres and parks."
The day our lawsuit was filed, the Otaru mayor's response was: "I don't think
we have made any legal mistakes." (doko ni mo houritsuteki na machigai wa nai
to omou). He is right. There exist no laws to break.
But this is in itself a violation of the CERD. Passing anti-discrimination legislation
"without delay" does not jibe well with Japan's inactive five years since
ratification. This case will help clarify whether Japan will adhere to its treaty
obligations, and is ready for its much-coveted seat on the UN Security Council.
We'll see you in court.
Arudou Debito
Sapporo
February 28, 2001
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Copyright 2002, Arudou Debito/Dave Aldwinckle, Sapporo, Japan